Most Have Meat : Few Buyers Beef About Stores’ Stock

Shoppers were served up surprises at meat counters across the San Fernando Valley as the supermarket meat cutters’ strike and lockout continued Friday.

Emma Weda of Van Nuys experienced it when she pushed her shopping cart up to the nearly empty Ralphs meat counter at 7225 Woodman Ave. in Van Nuys. “I can’t believe it. They’re out of everything. I didn’t know there was a strike,” she said.

Christine Garcia of Arleta felt it as she stocked up on chicken, steak and pork chops at the full Vons meat counter at 10321 Sepulveda Blvd. in Mission Hills. “I’m surprised there’s so much here. With the strike on, we didn’t expect to find anything in the meat department,” she said.

The discovery of plentiful supplies of meat was the surprise for shoppers at most supermarkets checked Friday between Woodland Hills and North Hollywood--even at Vons markets that were ringed by sign-carrying pickets. When the meat cutters’ and Teamsters unions struck Vons on Tuesday, other chains locked out the unions’ workers.

Three Cartloads

In Woodland Hills, Xiomara Fields directed three cartloads of bagged groceries through the picket line outside the Vons at 23381 Mulholland Drive.

“They had plenty of beef--everything I wanted,” Fields said, “everything except chicken. I couldn’t find any chicken in there. I guess I’m not going to be eating chicken.”

Grocery sacker Scott Thompson, 18, who helped load Fields’ $198 purchase into her car, suggested a small neighborhood grocery where she could find poultry. She said she would drive there.

Ida Davis stopped at the Ralphs at 9750 Woodman Ave. in Pacoima for a handful of items, including hamburger and steak. She found a a wide selection of meat and chicken at the neatly filled counter. “If it gets worse, I’ll get by. I’ll eat vegetables,” she said.

“I’ll figure something out. I’ll eat from a can if I have to,” said Van Nuys resident George Holmes, surveying packages of hamburger that had been arranged to cover the meat counter at the Van Nuys Ralphs.

‘Just as Full’

In North Hollywood, Mary Banzali marveled over the bulging meat counter at the Safeway store at 6030 Lankershim Blvd. “This looks just as full as it always does. But I think I’m going to stock up and get a week’s worth,” she said.

Farther down the Safeway counter, Dave Gutierrez, the store’s assistant grocery manager, said he will work 60 hours this week cutting and packaging meat. “The only thing I’ve run out of so far is salmon steak,” he said. “You should have seen this counter this morning. It was beautiful. It looked like a grand opening.”

At the Mission Hills Vons store, retired butcher Harry Adams was leisurely refilling the meat counter. “I’m a friend of the manager here and he asked me to come work. I spent 35 years as a meat manager in Florida. But I’m studying credit management now,” he said.

In contrast, Hughes market manager Ted Yates looked harried in his plastic hard hat and bloody white apron as he stocked his store’s meat rack at 16940 Devonshire St. in Granada Hills. His counter also looked more messy than normal, with the meat wrapped in wrinkled, off-center and sometimes loose cellophane. A three-pound pot roast that had slipped free of its wrapper lay amid the steaks.

Shopper Kay Sigrud of Granada Hills said the Hughes market had plenty of meat, although the selection was disordered, making it hard to find some cuts. “They sure have been piling it over and moving it around, haven’t they?” she said.

Panorama City resident Tracy Taylor found the counter at the Grocery Warehouse at 14620 Parthenia Ave. jammed with neatly arranged meat. When she asked a clerk for a tray of ground beef smaller than those on display, such a package was swiftly delivered to her from the back room. “Great service,” Taylor said.

Large supplies of meat were also found at a Lucky store in Van Nuys, an Alpha Beta in North Hollywood and at the Gelsons store in Encino. Gelsons is one of four chains that have signed interim agreements with the two unions involved in the dispute and are unaffected by the labor conflict.

Also untouched by the strike was the tiny Irvine Ranch Farmer’s Market at 19524 Nordhoff St., Northridge. It is non-union--at least for now, as one of its butchers explained to shopper Allan Erickson of Chatsworth.

“We’ve only eight stores now. They open another couple and I’m sure the union will come after us,” the butcher said.